Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.Let us discover some new alphabet,For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.There is an oriole who, upside down,Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,—Under a tree as dead and still as lead;There is a single leaf, in all this heavenOf leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caughtUpon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroomWhich catches three drops from the stooping cloud.The timid bee goes back to the hive; the flyUnder the broad leaf of the hollyhockPerpends stupid with cold; the raindark snailSurveys the wet world from a watery stone...And still the syllables of water whisper:The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we waitIn the dark room; and in your heart I findOne silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

Chiarascuro: Rose

He

Fill your bowl with roses: the bowl, too, have of crystal.Sit at the western window. Take the sunBetween your hands like a ball of flaming crystal,Poise it to let it fall, but hold it still,And meditate on the beauty of your existence;The beauty of this, that you exist at all.

She

The sun goes down,—but without lamentation.I close my eyes, and the stream of my sensationIn this, at least, grows clear to me:Beauty is a word that has no meaning.Beauty is naught to me.

He

The last blurred raindrops fall from the half-clear sky,Eddying lightly, rose-tinged, in the windless wake of the sun.The swallow ascending against cold waves of cloudSeems winging upward over huge bleak stairs of stone.The raindrop finds its way to the heart of the leaf-bud.But no word finds its way to the heart of you.

She

This also is clear in the stream of my sensation:That I am content, for the moment, Let me be.How light the new grass looks with the rain-dust on it!But heart is a word that has no meaning,Heart means nothing to me.

He

To the end of the world I pass and back againIn flights of the mind; yet always find you here,Remote, pale, unattached . . . O Circe-too-clear-eyed,Watching amused your fawning tiger-thoughts,Your wolves, your grotesque apes—relent, relent!Be less wary for once: it is the evening.

She

But if I close my eyes what howlings greet me!Do not persuade. Be tranquil. Here is fleshWith all its demons. Take it, sate yourself.But leave my thoughts to me.